Abstract: Ingratiation is a common impression management strategy in organizations. Existing studies generally believe that employees can benefit from their upward ingratiation behavior, with little attention paid to the negative impact of upward ingratiation on employees themselves. Based on social information process theory, this study examines the relationship between employees’ upward ingratiation and their status in workplace through two different research designs (i.e., survey and experiment), and examines the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions of the above relationship. Both the survey and the experimental results show that employees’ upward ingratiation can reduce colleagues’ perception of employees’ integrity level, which in turn has a negative impact on employees’ status in workplace, and this indirect effect is moderated by employees’ competency. Compared with low-competence employees, high-competence employees’ upward ingratiation has a weaker negative indirect effect on their status in workplace through colleagues’ perception of employees’ integrity. The results of the study can not only improve the academic understanding of employees’ upward ingratiation from a third-party perspective, but also help employees avoid the potential harm of upward ingratiation to themselves.

Key words: upward ingratiation, perception of integrity, competence, status in workplace, social information process theory